Piercings may be all the rage, but not everyone’s experience end up the way they imagine. Piercings show a responsibility for your body and the ability to alter it as you wish. Since you have to be 18 to get any piercings without your parents present, the piercings you get show your rising adulthood. For five students, their piercing provided them with a story to tell for years to come.

Let ’er Rip

Sally Kim risked the life of her nose piercing doing an everyday task.
“I was washing then drying my face and the towel caught my nose piercing and my ripped it out,” Kim said. “This all happened before school, like 6:45. I was trying to put the ring back in for 30 minutes and was crying and freaking out because I thought that it would close if I didn’t get it back in. I had to go to school with a open hole in my face. When I came back home, I shoved a needle in the piercing hole in my nose, and it luckily wasn’t closed. So then I tried to shove my piercing in, but it still wouldn’t go in. So my grandma was like, ‘Yo let me try.’ So I let her, and she got it in. My nose piercing was really infected.”

Parkway Pass-out

Chloe Appel was very nervous about getting her belly button pierced.
“As soon as they pierced it, I stood up looked in the mirror said, ‘It’s so cute,’ and then said I feel light-headed,” Appel said. “Next thing I knew I woke up on the ground. They let me lay on the ground and gave me a Popsicle.”

Pierce Together, Stay Together

For Ashley Gould and Mollie Weinberg, a bond with cheer coach Peyton Bond isn’t just skin deep anymore.
“Mollie and I had wanted to get our bellybuttons pierced for so long,” Gould said. “We had this conversation with each other and in front of our coach one day. She chimed in, encouraging us to get our belly buttons pierced. She even said she would get hers done with us. So two days later we all went to the tattoo and piercing shop and got it done. Mollie first, me second and Peyton last. She even said she was going to go last, so we didn’t chicken out.”

Crooked Catastrophe

Kallie Haugen lived every person’s worst nightmare when going in to get a piercing.
“I don’t know exactly how it ended up crooked,” Haugen said. “The guy who pierced it didn’t use a clamp, so I guess that’s why. And I was pretty upset once I realized it was crooked since I had been looking forward to getting it done for a while and spent so much money to get it done.”
Haugen got her belly button re-pierced shortly after she let the crooked hole heal.